


First Dance

by Flora (florahart)



Category: Dancing with the Stars RPF
Genre: Implied Underage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I used publicly available information regarding dates and events referenced in this fic (London, the Shawn incident, the band), but was uncomfortable digging for a ton of details because RPF is still fiction and getting toooo close felt invasive to me (this isn't a criticism of other people's choices, just my feeling).  It is my hope that the outcome is something which feels possible, but is not difficult to distinguish from reality.  Thanks to my ultra-speedy last-minute beta-reader for 1. pointing out errors and 2. reassuring me in general.</p></blockquote>





	First Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lordess renegade](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lordess+renegade).



It's funny, the things Derek remembers and doesn't about all their shared first times.

They almost share a birthday--a week apart, but a year different--and he remembers the first year they celebrated it jointly. One of them was turning thirteen, the first official year of being a teen-ager, though he doesn't really remember which of them it was. He could figure it out, if he did the math and thought about the calendar a little, but it doesn't matter; the point is, it was the first time they shared something sort of personal.

It wasn't weird to him to share the celebration (he's one of five kids, and when you live with that many people in a community where everyone lives with that many people, and you strive for the kind of life that the Church asks of you, the life of self-sufficiency and service, there's a _lot_ of sharing, and a lot of choosing what things matter enough to defend against siblings and cousins and foster brothers), but he remembers it was weird to only-child Mark. Not that Mark said anything; he was polite about it, gracious about allowing Derek to have half the attention and half the laughs, but Derek could feel it in his stomach later, as he looked up at the ceiling in the dark and considered that if one wasn't accustomed to thinking about which things were important, then maybe everything felt important.

It was one of the things they kept coming back to, in the studio: considering how a thing would feel, trying to have a genuine response to an invented moment, but then hold the response in one's hands, controlled, to display or conceal or reveal as the choreography or the music demands. It's the feeling, and controlling how it's conveyed, that makes dancing an art, and there are a thousand kinds of feelings, most of them complicated, that come up.

He wondered if he was being arrogant, somehow, assuming Mark would be shallow and selfish, but he knew that at least, his life in Utah had tended to focus on things differently than nearly everything that he'd seen here in Mark's life--he and Julianne found themselves startled kind of a lot by things that were just, just _different_ here, even after the whole mess that had sent them to London in the first place. But he didn't really like thinking about his parents, and besides, part of this whole brother thing was new to him anyway; he'd always only had sisters.

He listened to his stomach a minute longer, because it was hard to feel arrogant when communing with one's guts. "Mark?"

"Yeah?"

Looking back, he knows it's really not a normal conversation for a couple of eighth-grade boys to have had, but then, most kids at that age aren't practically professional artists. "I'm trying to capture the feeling," he said quietly. "So I can manufacture it another time."

"What feeling?"

"The one about having somebody else sort of steal half my birthday." Mark certainly understood the concept; they talked about manufacturing emotions all the time at school. Derek sort of hoped he also understood that what he was saying here was that it was a valid emotion, feeling a little cheated, and that he was not really apologizing, because he hadn't done anything, but he was recognizing it.

After a quiet minute, he could hear Mark turning over, and then see the vague silhouette of him coming up on his elbow. "I don't think that. It's not like I've never celebrated early before. Sometimes there are performances, or exams, you know?"

"Not the same, though."

"No. But… okay, maybe I think it a little, but only because it's different, not because it's bad."

"Yeah, I know." Derek rolled up onto his side, too. "I was thinking. Maybe we can trade. Feelings, I mean, when there are new ones. I've had a lot of new ones this year. Last year. I don't know, just the whole… Well, some of them are ones I can definitely use."

"Yeah." Mark seemed to think about that a minute, then added, "We should."

They didn't actually talk about it any more, or if they did, Derek doesn't remember that. He just remembers that it was awkward, and then it wasn't, and that he's used _that_ moment--the weird vulnerability of not-understanding, and of trying to see--a lot of times to good effect.

Well, and he remembers that after that they had a lot more whispered conversations late when they were supposed to be asleep; it was like they needed something to be irritated with each other about before they could be friends, sort of like the way it was important to maintain good strong posture and still have the looseness and flexibility to swivel and rotate the hips: the opposition was what made everything work.

\--

London was only supposed to be for a year, so when the show rolled around, it should have just been that they were sort of childhood friends with some school memories and a lot of competitive history. But a year turned into eighteen months and then two years, and it was _London_, with all the opportunities that implied. Yeah, Derek sort of missed, in an undescribed and not particularly deeply considered way, the drier climate and open space of Utah, but he had Julianne, so they could help each other out with that.

And he had Mark, which worked out pretty well: it gave him a brother and meant Julianne had both of them keeping an eye on her.

Not that she needed their help; pound for pound she was probably tougher than either of them.

Actually, forget the probably.

In any case, it seemed for a while like there was another first every day. The first time they were up for the same production, then the first time they tried for the same part. The first time they took a (sanctioned) afternoon off and spent it in the West End, seeing one show in the afternoon and another at night without either show being any part of their schoolwork but rather just for the fun of it. The first time Derek taught a class. The first time he made Mark tag along to the class with so he could use him as an example because eight-year-olds are _brats_.

Then there was the first time they took an afternoon off, unsanctioned, and explored the ways in which a couple of teenage boys could lose themselves in a city, knowing full well that the consequences would be dire (because not only was Mark's mother his _mother_, but she had the full suite of artistic temperament as well, and her capacity for colorful volatility was especially impressive to Derek and Julianne because of course their parents had argued and they knew no one was above getting angry, but this was a whole different category than the moderate sorts of disagreement that had been acceptable, at least in public, in their family). It was the fact the Julianne wasn't with them that brought the boys home, flushed with independence, before there could be any truly serious freaking out. It might have been worth the explosion, but neither of them wanted to make Jules cry.

Not that they discussed that aspect in any detail; it was against some sort of guy code, and besides, Mark was a little funny already about Julianne by then, stuck somewhere between big brother and teenage boy. If he'd known by then that eventually the teenage boy part would fledge out into a crush and possibly more Derek didn't like considering, actually, ever, he might have gone about some of the other firsts differently, like the first time they compared notes about wanking (a word he didn't know if anyone in Utah even used, and which sounded funny coming from Texas-born Mark even though the drawl was only occasionally present in his speech, but which was the standard in this part of the world), or the first time Mark introduced him to a friend that could get him a painkiller that was totally legitimate for some of the aches and pains that came with their territory (not that that was actually why he wanted it), or the first time he offered Mark a bit of a pointer regarding where at the school was a good place for a little private time (which, in hindsight, he thought probably the entire staff knew about but ignored).

Or the first time all that came together into a slightly bizarre Sunday afternoon in which they were home alone and privacy, unnecessary painkillers, and wanking all jumbled into something brilliant and complicated and definitely, determinedly, relentlessly undiscussed despite Mark making a pretty fair effort at making him talk about it later.

The guy code didn't even have a page for that, and at sixteen, Derek wasn't prepared to try to invent one. Retreating from the situation had worked pretty well for tolerating his parents' divorce and remarriages, after all.

\--

"I heard you were coming on too," Derek said, leaning against the jamb. "Wasn't sure you had the cojones." They'd been busy separately for a while, so it'd been all phones and emails for weeks, but Mark's grin was familiar when he looked up, and just as it had in London in 2002 (and 3, and 4), it made Derek's stomach hitch. Crap, he was going to have to do something about that; every time they didn't hang out for a while, because one of them was working, or both of them were, or there was a production somewhere that needed choreographers (all right, that was working, because what else did they do but work?), he got all pathetic again, and he didn't need to bring that dynamic here. His girlfriend wasn't in LA, and that would only complicate everything that much worse, and besides, he and Mark weren't anything like that. It was just the once, he reminded himself yet again.

"Seems like easy work," Mark said, apparently unaware of the frustrating turn of Derek's thoughts. He was pawing through a duffel bag of clothes, looking for something. "Good pay, too."

"Easy, I don't know." Derek pushed off from the door and leaned down to pick up the rolled-together socks that had hit the floor in the rifling. "I heard some of the stars have, like, all the tact and emotional flexibility of your standard room of seven-year-olds, only with thirty or forty years of practice at being spoiled and no physical training at _all_."

"Yeah, but I figured if _you_ could do it…"

Derek threw the socks. "Smartass." It only made Mark more of a smartass that he caught them.

"Only a little. Besides, it's not like we don't compete anyway, you know?"

"Sometimes."

"_All_ the time." Mark said. "And I'm a better teacher than you are."

Derek pointed a finger. "That's bullshit and you know it."

Mark just grinned the goofy grin that made everyone think he was all about some of the more ridiculous characters he sometimes put on, the ones he could pull off and Derek had a harder time making convincing, and changed the subject. "Hey, so do you know when we find out who we're teamed up with?"

Derek shrugged. "Kind of depends how fast they get all the contracts nailed down, I guess. You know how it is--things change right up until curtain, and sometimes you go out sewn into costume because they didn't have time to finish the zipper."

"Yeah, but I figured they must have the cast pretty settled. I mean, two days until we start trying to teach our tactless, spoiled, out-of-shape stars how to count, right? I don't think sewing us to a star will work very well." He pulled out a tattered shirt and tugged the one he'd been wearing over his head to trade it in.

Derek watched him change, trying to be clinical about the skin that, obviously, he'd seen a thousand times and so had a hundred people at a time in various backstage areas because sometimes there were half a dozen dressers unzipping and zipping and tucking in thirty seconds between exit from and entry to the stage. Obviously, Mark intended to go get started on something now, in that old shirt and sweatpants that had seen better days. "You want a tour?" he asked as Mark tied his shoes. He'd been here for a few days, so at least he'd already found the water fountain and the various makeup and costume areas.

Mark looked up, then frowned. "All right, here we go."

"What?"

"You're doing that thing. That eyebrow thing." He touched his index finger between his own brows. "And I thought we agreed, you freaking out about that was all behind us."

"I'm not freaking out." Derek deliberately relaxed his brow, trying not to scowl because for all Mark was the younger one and the one everyone thought was a lot less serious and a lot more light-hearted, he was just _better_ at their… relationship, or non-relationship, or whatever it was they didn't have besides having been brothers for ten years and having Julianne in common even though she and Mark weren't a thing any more just like Derek and Mark… he was working himself into more brow-furrowing, and Mark wasn't buying it. When Mark put his hands on his hips and just looked at him, he shook his head. "I'm not. I swear. It's just jet lag and an overabundance of sunshine. I mean. London, you know; I might have developed an allergy to all this bright weather."

The jet lag and sunshine was for show, of course, but the not freaking out part was basically true, except for that he knew perfectly well Mark _meant_ that he was thinking about it, and he was. He just wasn't (quite) freaking out. Thinking and doing weren't the same, and he knew he could control one of those things just like he could control the angles of his feet and knees and the height to which he lifted a partner, so he would.

Mark watched him for a minute, then shrugged, letting it go yet again. "Tour, then?"

\--

"I hear you guys went to the beach." Mark hadn't bothered knocking, because he never did, though he seemed really good at knowing when Shannon was around, and just not showing up then. Which was good, because Derek was pretty sure the distraction, which at the studio he could definitely play as a function of work-versus-play, would be apparent.

"Yeah, sun, sand, relaxation…" Derek looked up and shrugged. "It's seriously weird playing out a thing like that with the cameras on."

"No, really?" Mark plunked down on the couch next to Derek and put his feet up on the table. "I heard the editing guys say it was going to be a bitch to splice it together for just enough hot and just enough coyness for their two minutes of air. So my question is, what are they editing out?"

Derek raised his eyebrows. "Uh. I don't understand the question."

"Yeah, you do. Are they editing the beach sex out, or in?" Mark put his feet back on the floor and stood. "No, actually, I don't want to know." He went to get a bottled water out of Derek's fridge and came back, leaning against the wall. "It's not my business, except in the sense that if this is getting all crazy serious and it's going to fuck with practice time for the band--"

"It won't."

"Good, because even if we're not, like, the hottest up and coming band or anything, it's a pain in the ass to reschedule."

"It won't fuck with it." Derek was unreasonably bothered by the conversation, though he wasn't sure whether that was because of the implication Mark actually did have opinions about who he had sex with and where, or because he said it didn't matter. Which was ridiculous, because it wasn't like it was relevant to anything they did. And it wasn't like Mark wasn't sleeping with one of the grips (Katrina? Marina? Something like that).

"I heard you. Hey, so, did it work?"

"What?"

"To teach her whatever you meant to teach her. You know, in your pathetic, unskillful teaching way."

Derek shook his head and reached for the remote. He didn't really watch television very often, but this was the weirdest conversation he'd had all week, and that was including the one with Julianne about her boyfriend issue of the week, which, all right, at least this time the boyfriend in question wasn't Mark, and at least he didn't think she was engaged to this one, so that was good, but still. Weird. Whatever was on the screen was probably less stupid than whatever was going to come out of his mouth next.

…Okay, maybe not.

No, maybe so; even a show about, evidently, housewives who shopped all day (and never entertained the slightest of thoughts not focused on parties, tans, and spa treatments) was sure to be an improvement over him contemplating that one time, years ago now, that they didn't talk about. It wasn't like it was ever going to happen again.

\--

Derek didn't even know what had set the whole thing off, because it wasn't making a whole lot of sense, but it was something about how they were approaching tonight's performance, and Mark was still pissed off about yesterday and… and Derek wasn't even clear on why.

It had seemed straightforward enough. A friendly discussion about freestyle ideas over a beer, because it was getting close enough to time to be thinking about where they'd go with it, with a pretty good idea what their respective partners could do, and they were both still here. And Mark had said something about what he'd thought about for Shannon, if they'd made it that far, and Derek had said something about Shawn and flexibility and how she could probably pretty much do anything, and obviously he hadn't meant anything awful, but everything had gone completely off-kilter, and now here they were with, what, twenty minutes to show-time? And Mark had Derek backed up hard against the wall, not exactly afraid because he wasn't afraid of simple passion. He was basically comfortable with passion and emotion, all those things they'd learned about as kids.

Just not while Mark was all in his face about something to do with costuming, which yeah, he had _input_ about costumes, obviously, because that was part of the show, but he was missing something.

Derek sighed. "Look, seriously, I didn't mean anything about the Shawn thing, and--"

"Of course you didn't mean anything. You never mean anything." Mark abruptly stepped back and crossed his arms. "My head is so not where it should be. Fuck. Sorry."

"Well put it there, because I don't like fighting about nothing at all." Derek's tone had gone sharp now, and obviously his head wasn't where it should be, either, because getting madder about an apology than a fight was just stupid, and he _knew_ about how Mark could be mercurial. "Never mind. Just, could you tell me what the problem is?"

Mark scowled. "Same thing it always is. Every time we try to hold a conversation that's about one of us, and has anything at all to do with sex, it goes all sideways without either of us even meaning for it to, and it's like neither one of us can remember it's a problem topic. As long as we're talking about the steps or the turns or the lifts or even the _band_, we're great, but you do better talking to _Jules_ about her sex life--"

"Ugh. Please, this is Julianne we're talking about."

"Yeah, but she's your baby sister, whom I'm pretty sure you know at least in principle is scorching hot, and this is my point."

"And you think we should… talk about our sex lives? Which always goes badly?" Derek closed his eyes. It _did_ always go badly, which was his own damn fault, but being in love with Mark (a phrase that only happened in his own head for obvious reasons) was completely impractical and always had been, so he'd tried to just move on. He opened his eyes and put on a camera-worthy grin. "Doesn't yours involve macaques or something? I don't think I want to--"

Mark stepped forward again. "Just because you want to play it cool and leave the topic all walled up doesn't mean it's not still a problem," he said, from about five inches away. Derek stared for a long moment, then put out his tongue, dragging it back in to wet his suddenly-dry lips so he could speak. Mark breathed in suddenly, and Derek realized that had probably looked like some sort of invitation (the art of making something look sexy was full of rules about wet and dry and tongue and eyes, and he knew them perfectly well and knew why they worked and could apply them without thought in other contexts, so how had he totally forgotten here?), and damn it, he hadn't meant to compound the problem, but Mark was _right there_. He shook his head, not in denial of the tongue thing, but in acknowledgement of it.

"It is still a problem," he agreed quietly. He wasn't sure whether he wanted Mark to back off or come closer, and they were standing behind the not-quite-shut door, and someone was going to come looking for them any minute, and somehow, this moment was critical. And Mark wasn't moving. His eyes had gone still and dark, and all at once it was as though everything rested on five inches of air and one wayward tongue. Mark was willing, but doing anything about this was all up to Derek, and it felt final, like coming to here and then retreating again was an irrevocable decision that would play into everything from here until forever.

Maybe the first time they'd come to this point had been the same, and he'd just been too young to understand and had somehow gotten a free pass because he was an idiot. They'd always been directly competitive with one another, after all, studying the same things at the same time and knocking each other out of contests with the perfect hip shimmy or just exactly the right snap of the chin, and this felt like that, like one of them needed to win. Maybe both of them needed to win. Maybe Derek's brain needed to stop spinning like he was in the pirouette finals, head snapping to the same focal point over and over while everything else whirled. He blinked, then leaned forward, pressing his lips to Mark's softly.

Naturally, there was a rush of footsteps outside the door just as his body followed, and being a professional sucked, because they were definitely not going to just toss the show aside; this could wait. Had been waiting, obviously.

Mark pulled back and smiled. "About fucking time, and I'm holding you to it this time."

Derek watched him run off for final costume adjustment crap, and swallowed. Yeah, final, and frightening, and probably before kissing anyone he ought to have remembered he had a girlfriend still, and even more probably he should have found it worrisome that having remembered now, he didn't seem to care.

He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, willing his heartbeat to slow, flexing large muscles both to warm them and to force other automatic bodily functions to stop because walking out there half-hard seemed like a bad idea (he wondered whether Mark was less worried about it, or less affected), then took his time getting to his starting place. He'd be there by the time the cameras rolled, but not very much before.

\--

"What's wrong?" Mark had come off the floor with his face set into something that would pass for good cheer; he and Shawn had made good scores and had a lot of fun, so for him to look upset wouldn't have made sense, but Derek had been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes to get to a point at which he could quietly ask why the expression wasn't genuine.

Mark closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's nothing."

"I thought we were talking now."

"We always talk." Mark opened his eyes and grinned, fake, but convincing, and clearly meaning to save anything real for later on. "You know. Just trying to capture a feeling."

Derek stepped back and nodded. "For using it another time. Right." He grinned back, a wide, cheesy, professional grin that was photographable and just as fake. "Later, then?"

"Yeah, go on." Mark went back to the usual post-show routines about last-minute changes to the elimination show schedule and handouts regarding options, music, and rules for the upcoming week, all the things that made any performance work, but never were apparent to the audience. Derek stayed put for a few seconds, then went to run through the same routines himself before heading back to put on street clothes and go home.

He wasn't sure how it was that Mark beat him to his place; he'd been quick and fairly efficient both in getting out of the studio and in driving home, but when he got there, Mark was leaning against the wall next to the door.

"Could have let yourself in," Derek said. "Last I checked, you have a key."

Mark shrugged and followed him in, then went to the fridge and got each of them bottle of water. He handed one to Derek and sat down on the couch, so Derek sat down, too.

"You tired?"

"No," Mark said. "I was just thinking it's weird how we get done with the whole show and through everything and it's still light out. I mean, partly it's that it's LA--no different from Houston, I guess--but also it's just, television makes everything off-schedule and strange."

Derek wasn't sure where Mark was headed, but after everything from before, the change of mood was just weird. He got the sense pushing would be bad, though, so he kept his words neutral, no matter how not-neutral he felt."That's not new this year."

"Yeah, I know. Still feels weird." Mark sipped at his water. "I should have stayed out of the whole issue earlier," he said quietly.

"Wait, now _you_ don't want to talk about it?" Derek turned a little, bringing his knee up onto the couch between them and letting his ankle hang over the edge.

"No, I do; it's just… there are probably pictures all over the internet by now."

"Pictures of _us_?" Derek frowned. "Was there--"

"No. Pictures of me. And Shawn. Who is, legally, a child."

"Did we not have a conversation about this already today?"

"We did, and Shawn is still seventeen, and that's not what I meant. See, it was just such a fun happy dance, and I was feeling good about the whole, you know." Mark waved a hand between them. "And I was thinking about the whole later thing we were talking about, and then we were dancing...I'm sure someone's gone through frame by frame for the worst possible shot."

"And there are pictures. Of you…" Derek paused. "Okay, I'm pretty sure no one had a wardrobe malfunction because the whole department would have been waiting around to see who got canned, so that leaves, like, inappropriate groping."

"And inappropriate wood," Mark said. He let his head drop back on the cushion and looked up at the ceiling. "And yay, it makes me a pervert."

Derek spit the sip of water he'd just taken. "Did anyone say anything?"

"Oh, of course. Because the panel and Tom and Samantha don't have any experience with live shows. No, no one said anything."

"Well that's good."

"Still, I'm about 500% sure at least one of the cameras got a ridiculous shot, and I wasn't about to force Shawn to stand right in front of me and, uh. Feel that."

Derek pursed his lips and said, "I guess that makes you not a pervert, then."

Mark raised a finger and circled it in the air. "I was having such a nice afternoon before that."

"So…" Derek set down his water on the coffee table and watched the drops on the inside slide and drip back down.

"So I know better than to get myself worked into a knot about you before I try to be useful for anything else, and I know to do something about it before the show if I'm thinking anything like that. Today I was busy."

Derek thought about what to say to that. Because it sounded like Mark was saying that usually, if he was thinking about Derek, he… oh. Derek glanced over, blushing. "You're not busy now."

"Little late to solve the problem."

"You could demonstrate your solution. So I know what to remind you to do. Next time." Derek knew his face had gone past pink to probably blotchy, but he'd been retreating for years and today he hadn't retreated and he didn't want to any more. "Or--"

"_Demonstrate_?" Mark lifted his head off the back of the couch and looked at Derek. "Okay, not that there's not a certain amount of really hot in the notion of you watching, but I don't think I want to go this alone."

"No?" Derek pulled his other knee up onto the edge of the couch and bit his lip. "You do know I don't, I mean, it was just that one time." He leaned forward, folding over his legs and then, when Mark didn't stop him (but did give a long glance down and back up), rose up a little bit onto his knees. "So I might have forgotten how."

Mark reached for him, fingers warm against his hip as he rose up more and put a hand behind Mark's shoulder for balance so he could shuffle forward until his knees were against Mark's thigh. "Me, either, mostly. Not quite, but I mean, me, too. Good thing we're both excellent students of proprioception and kinetic principles?"

They'd touched each other before a million times, spotting everything from lifts to leaps and adjusting unreachable bits of costume and slapping each other's backs, and they'd smiled at each other a million times too, for cameras and audiences and mothers who approved of friendliness, but Mark's fingers sliding up and finding the hem of Derek's shirt to lift was a whole new thing, and Derek froze for a second, looking down at him. "Yeah. Good thing."

"You okay?"

Derek lifted one knee and pushed it forward across Mark's thighs, just grazing, feeling the muscles there tighten and quiver as he moved slowly, turning, setting the knee down and dropping back. The backs of his thighs rested on Mark's, but his ass hung off the edge, and he paused, considering whether it was moving too fast to worm his way forward and press close. Too fast. Yeah, seven years between steps was really like lightning, he thought with a snort.

Mark's fingers, still on the skin below his ribs, tightened. "What's funny?"

Derek snorted again, then chuckled. "I was just telling myself not to spoil anything by moving too fast," he said after a minute.

The fingers found a belt loop and tugged, and then Mark's other hand was doing the same, pulling Derek flush against him and wandering up his back under his shirt, holding him in place as they hit each of the little muscles that articulated the spine and each of the larger ones above. "If you move any slower, I'm going to have to set up a time-lapse camera or something," he said, head dropped back again to meet Derek's eyes as Derek folded over him and brought his elbows up to rest on the back of the couch.

"That's why it was funny," Derek said. "I thought it, and then noticed I haven't exactly been blazing ahead so far."

"So, blaze," Mark said. He shifted slightly, and Derek could feel the way that pushed at his growing erection with a matching one. It was impossible not to arch a little, push a little, watch Mark's face as they worked their way into some kind of alignment, and then they were kissing again, a slow, hungry tasting and showing, mouths open, Derek's fingers carding into Mark's hair as Mark's dug into sundry spots on his back: the ridge of the shoulder (trapezius; a little tight), the groove of the spine (Derek shivered and straightened just a little, then shivered again at the change of angle), the meeting point of the committee of shoulder muscles (delts and traps and under the collarbone, pecs). Derek's shirt was practically up over his head, and he pulled his arms back, one by one, out of their sleeves, then replaced his hands in Mark's hair. Pulling the collar over his head meant breaking the kiss, and he wasn't ready for that.

Mark shifted again, turning, his calf pushing at Derek's foot, and as they squirmed their way horizontal, working together for the common goal without any communication but a press here or a shiver there, Derek paused and finally did lift his head. "This couch isn't big enough for this." He pulled the shirt over his head while he had the chance, then dropped back down for another kiss.

"I know, but I don't want to stop," Mark groaned, moving one leg outside of Derek's and hooking calf around calf. He met the kiss eagerly, then dropped his chin to break it again, and went to work on Derek's chin and jaw, hands moving down now to grope his ass and thighs.

"Just for a second," Derek said. He untangled his leg and pushed up, shuddering because yes, he _could_ have lifted away in one move (Pilates would have ensured that if hundreds of weeks of posture and posing hadn't); however, he hadn't. He'd come up shoulders-first, and that had only pressed them together harder at the groin. He considered forgetting about moving this to a real bed, then curved his back and arched again, and got up. "Just for a second," he repeated, pulling Mark up with him.

They stumbled around the divider, pulling at shirts and waistbands and shoving at shoes, and if it did take longer than a second and lack all the grace it could have had (kinetic principles? Proprioception? Out the window), by the time they hit the bed, bouncing, laughing, they were both bare to the skin, warm and giddy and rolling toward each other to re-establish touch.

Mark pushed Derek onto his back and ran fingers up his inner thigh before following him down, hard thigh wedged between Derek's, hard cock lined up heatedly with Derek's and indescribably soft and strange.

Derek gasped.

"Okay?"

"I forgot," Derek said. He pushed his hips up the tiniest bit, sliding his cock alongside Mark's, and gasped again. They hadn't done _this_ before, exactly; they'd been very young, after all, and touching alone had been exciting and amazing, so saying he'd forgotten wasn't exactly true, but he might have extrapolated. He might have remembered the velvet-over-steel sensation in his hands, the way that even though objectively it was not so different from touching himself, it wasn't the same at all, either, because when he touched himself, the overwhelming sensation was all about how his hands felt, from the perspective of his cock, and when he'd touched Mark, there was no such distraction; all that hot tender fascinating skin was all he could feel.

He rocked again, watching Mark tense and bite his lip, and it occurred to him this was a million times _better_, because the overwhelming sensation was how _Mark's cock_ felt on his, the distraction and the fascination in one space. He put up one hand behind Mark's neck and brought him down, still pulling and pressing--Mark was doing the same, and the rhythm should have been complicated or required some kind of negotiation, but it didn't matter, couldn't be better--and slid the other down his back, stopping to tickle in the groove of the spine, moving over to squeeze one round ass-cheek, groaning as that meant he accidentally brushed the so-soft thin skin of Mark's balls because his legs were apart for Derek's thigh, and that thigh was pressing against them, bringing them just into reach. He brushed again, jumping when Mark bit at his shoulder in response, then laughed when a third experiment got a harder bite and a shudder. "Good or bad?" he asked quietly.

Mark groaned and pressed forward, then muttered, "Trying not to leave a bruise, trying not--want to. Want it to show."

Derek's hips jerked up as he thought about a bruise that everyone could see, in practice, on the elimination show, toothmarks that would remind him all day long, and he dragged Mark back from that shoulder and kissed him hard, rocking up faster and gasping out half-words between kisses.

When he came, Mark was right there with him, and didn't even laugh at him when he mumbled something about having been an idiot. It was true, but they had time to laugh at him later.

\--

Derek stands in the wings after another quick change, glancing over at Mark.

They'll go on and sing in a minute, and the trouble with this plan is, it's hard enough keeping their relationship under wraps (because on the list of things they don't need is 'being on the list of people photographers like to follow around in hopes of getting an obnoxious shot'), but Derek isn't so sure it won't be utterly obvious with them singing to and with each other. It feels obvious to him.

Could be worse. They could have kept things the way they were. This would just be another first, then, not a piece of a whole bigger picture.

He thinks about that for a minute as they wait, about eleven years of firsts now, and glances over again. "This is fun."

Mark rolls his eyes. "You think everything's fun. Good thing you're usually--but not always--right."

"You're never going to stop with that qualification, are you?"

"Nope." Mark crouches to tie his shoe. "I plan to remind you indefinitely."

**Author's Note:**

> I used publicly available information regarding dates and events referenced in this fic (London, the Shawn incident, the band), but was uncomfortable digging for a ton of details because RPF is still fiction and getting toooo close felt invasive to me (this isn't a criticism of other people's choices, just my feeling). It is my hope that the outcome is something which feels possible, but is not difficult to distinguish from reality. Thanks to my ultra-speedy last-minute beta-reader for 1. pointing out errors and 2. reassuring me in general.


End file.
